Buried secrets, hidden lies

A hit and run takes place on a Maryland highway, and a very cold murder case heats up. The police pick up the woman driver, who has a minor head injury, and the story she begins to tell is stunning. She knows so much about the disappearance of a pair of sisters more than 15 years ago, so she must know what she’s talking about. The trouble is, she refuses to identify herself.

Laura Lippman teases her readers with one electifying discovery after another, not releasing us from suspense until the final surprising chapter. This is a literate, thinking person’s mystery, with layers of nuance, characters so genuine you wish you knew them, and an intricate, credible plot that never lets up for a minute. She skillfully presents the unsolved crime from the point of view of those most fully involved, from the victims to the perpetrators to the police. This is top notch crime writing, and I’ll be checking out Lippman’s other titles.

My Life So Far is the memoir of an engaging 10 year old, charmingly acted by Robert Norman. His traditional Scottish family, portrayed just after The Great War, lives the cultured life of the British upper class, but times are changing. Fraser and his eccentric inventor father (Colin Firth) both fall for the lovely French (ooh, la la!) fiance of an older, wealthier family scion, and the competition begins. Feeling belittled by his dad, Fraser vows to exact revenge by educating himself in the ways of the world by reading forbidden books. His strategy works, but there are several comical moments that develop because he does not quite understand what he is reading. The movie reaches a crisis when the family matriarch dies, and the denouement brings major changes. The actors are all well suited to their roles, the scenery is idyllic, and My Life is a charming, gentle story of times gone by.

It’s difficult to grasp the fact that Yoko Ono Lennon is 75 years old. Born in Tokyo in 1933, she and her parents moved between Asia and the US as demanded by the dictates of her father’s banking job. They were in Japan during WWII and suffered the deprivations common during war. In the early 1950’s, the Onos settled in Scarsdale, NY. Yoko attended Sarah Lawrence College, and to the dismay of her parents, embarked on a “Bohemian” life style as an artist. Yoko married a composer and attempted suicide after the marriage failed. In 1962, she married again, giving birth to a daughter, and despite marital strife, stayed with her husband for several more years, pursuing her career and leaving child care responsibilities to him.

In 1969, everything changed for Yoko when she met John Lennon, who attended one of her art exhibits. Lennon was attracted to her avant garde attitude towards both art and life, but their relationship did not heat up for a couple of years. When their affair finally began, and Lennon divorced his wife, public outrage was enormous. John and Yoko married in 1969, at the height of the peace/love/drugs movement, and became the most famous couple in the world, demonstrating for their beliefs with flamboyance, via a bed-in, naked photos, appearing in public wearing bags, and other in-your-face antics. The Lennons were flattered by their inclusion on President Nixon’s infamous anti-American list. Lennon insisted that Yoko participate in his music, though she was not especially gifted in that area, and when the Beatles ultimately broke up, disappointed fans held Yoko responsible. The couple was widely criticized for their treatment of Julian, Lennon’s son from his first marriage. Yoko’s former husband, believing that Lennon was a harmful influence on his daughter, kidnapped her from Yoko’s custody and refused to permit any contact. Attempts were being made to deport Lennon for drug use, and for a time, the marriage foundered.

The following year, Yoko and John reconciled, and their only child, Sean Lennon, was born. Shortly after the release of a joint album, John was murdered in front of their apartment at the Dakota in NYC.

For years, animosity toward Yoko continued, but she never gave up her artistic and social endeavors. She created a memorial to John Lennon in Central Park, Strawberry Fields, and the John Lennon Museum in Japan. Yoko recently has instituted a $50,000 Peace Prize for Palestinian and Israeli artists. Now 75, Yoko Ono has finally been given credit and recognition for her artistic and political contributions, and has reconciled with her daughter. It’s tempting to wonder what her reception might have been had she been Caucasian and beautiful.

Ingeniously incorporating a mix of memorable elements from earlier fantasy classics, including The Wizard of Oz, Men in Tights, King Kong, and their own fairy tale repertoire, the Disney folks, whose products are often annoying, have turned up a winner. Filmed like a musical, Enchanted is a delightful, sometimes fanciful , sometimes realistic tale about make believe characters who wind up in NYC because of the curse of an evil queen. Amy Adams and James Marsden are perfectly cast as the innocent, ingenuous maiden and prince, and Susan Sarandon overacts deliciously as the evil queen. Patrick Dempsey provides just the right contrast in his role as wordly, disappointed-in-love divorce lawyer, and, as his daughter, little Rachel Covey hits just the right note, neither too precocious nor too sweet. The hundreds of animals are right off the pages of Cinderella, even the bees, the pigeons, and the rats. The reactions of the New Yorkers who encounter the strange ensemble are priceless.
There are few surprises here, but its very predictably, presented in such a charmingly magical way, results in a film that lifts the heart as it entertains. The settings, costumes, music, and special effects are all first rate. In this film about love, what’s not to love?

Charlotte Bronte

Leonardo daVinci

Thomas Edison

Mark Twain

Henry Ford

Brad Pitt

Steve Martin

Christie Brinkley

Vincent Van Gogh

Natalie Portman

Richard Gere

Jerry Seinfeld

Orlando Bloom

Princess Diana

Drew Barrymore

all of the Beatles

Charles Darwin

Albert Schweitzer

Steve Jobs

We’ve been fascinated by bodies found in European bogs since they were first recognized as ancient in the late 19th century. Clonycaven Man was discovered in 2003, fished up by a commercial sieve in a peat processing operation. His image is haunting. Lying on his side, with a rope around his neck, his abdomen sliced open, there is little mystery about how he died. Why is an entirely different question. New technology is now being applied to the study of Clonycaven Man and other bog bodies in an attempt to learn more about the preliterate Iron Age society that buried them. National Geographic has posted online an article by Karen E. Lange exploring these efforts, with photos by Robert Clark.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/09/bog-bodies/bog-bodies-text

There are many times in life when it all changes, irrevocably, in a sudden, single moment. One of those timesthat most of us will never have to experience is the abduction of a child. One can only imagine….. If you read The Year of Fog, you won’t have to imagine. This book opens with a walk on the beach, which, in the course of 30 seconds, turns into one of life’s worst nightmares. This novel is about what happens to the missing child’s caretakers - what they feel, fear, do, and do not do. What happens to their thoughts, their relationships, the substance of their very lives, their selves. Parts of the narrative are incredibly painful, which is to be expected, but what I found surprising were the passages of almost unbearable suspense. Part psychology, part philosophy, and in a large part, mystery, this is a beautifully expressed, detailed work of fiction that suffers from a single fault, and that is its repetitiveness. But its strength far outweighs it weakness.

I’ve been reading some true crime lately, and, as a psychologist who does not usually encounter criminals, I find my interested piqued about what these guys might have had in common. It’s a huge subject, so by confining my comparison to 10, I hope to be better able to identify some key characteristics. I may be adding things, or people, from time to time, along with references to helpful resources. This list is not a ranking. All serial killers are monsters, and they’re all numero uno, just what they all wanted.

Because including all ten of these men would make for a very long post, only two at a time will be described, ending in a series of five posts.

Here goes.

1. Jack the Ripper (unsolved and still a open case)

This man was the first to gain worldwide notoriety for committing multiple, serial murders. Within a short period of time in 1888, he stabbed and mutilated five prostitutes in the Whitechapel district in London. The name came from a letter sent to a newspaper by someone claiming to be the perpetrator. When the name appeared in the news, it quickly stuck, setting a precedent for the colorful naming of serial murderers. The failure of the police to apprehend the killer also generated a legend, which, fed by genuine research, folk lore, and exploitation, continues to fascinate and grow even today. Several similar, though not identical, murders were committed in the district after 1888, but it was not possible to connect them to Jack the Ripper. Link to list of all those suspected: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper_suspects

Albert DeSalvo, The Boston Strangler

Between June, 1962 and January, 1964, thirteen single women in the Boston area were strangled in their homes with pieces of clothing, most having first been sexually assaulted. At least eleven of the victims were popularly believed to have been killed by the Boston Strangler. While the police did not see all of these murders as the work of a single individual, the public did. All of the victims were respectable, and appeared to have willingly permitted the assailant to enter their apartments.

In 1961, before the reign of terror began, 29 year old Albert DeSalvo was arrested in Cambridge, caught in the act of breaking and entering. He confessed to being The Measuring Man, who was knocking on the doors of women and telling them he was a rep for a modeling agency. He was a smooth talker with a winning smile and ingratiating manner. If they were interested, he would take their measurements and forward them to the agency. DeSalvo was convicted and incarcerated, and released in April, 1962, two months before the strangler spree began.

In November, 1963, a young woman was gagged and tied to her bed by a knife-wielding intruder. Something must have spooked him, because he fled without seriously harming her. She provided a description of the man that yielded a drawing that was very like that of the Measuring Man, and DeSalvo was arrested again. He bragged about having committed over 400 break ins and 300 sexual assaults in a four state area, many of which had gone unreported. DeSalvo was went to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation, where he confessed to being the Boston Strangler.

But was he? People who knew DeSalvo didn’t think so, but that’s generally the case. Born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1931, Albert had a difficult upbringing, with an abusive, alcoholic father. His relationship with his mother appears to have been a good one, but Albert drifted into delinquency and was frequently in trouble. He joined the army, and was accused of fondling a young girl, but her mother declined to press charges. He married, and his wife complained that he demanded sex five or six times a day. Otherwise, DeSalvo took reasonably good care of his family, and held a steady job, but he soon fell into a life of crime.He was described as personable and gentle. His wife, however, claimed that he was obsessed with sex, and others characterized him as a loudmouth braggart who could not be believed. There is evidence that DeSalvo and another hospital inmate cooked up a plot whereby his friend would turn him in and they would split the money DeSalvo would earn by telling his story. He would also convince authorities he was insane, thereby avoiding execution. DeSalvo’s attorney, F. Lee Bailey, liked his client, but based on the graphic details he provided about the various murders, had no doubt that he was the Strangler.

Albert DeSalvo went to Walpole State Prison, where he was murdered in 1973 by an unknown assailant.

Because You Loved Me is a detailed case study of different sorts of love, platonic, parental, romantic, and obsessive. It’s easy to predict which type will go wrong. The High Queen of the drama queens, Nicole, falls in a twisted sort of love with macho manipulator Billy, and in a metter of days, she is blind to all the good things in her life. Her mom, her friends, her education, her home - Nicole no longer sees value in any of this, and when Billy enters the picture, purely by chance, her daily existence changes from normal to, in her estimation, a living hell. And suddenly, she cannot fathom how she can possibly live without this guy whom she barely knows. Together, Nicole and Billy make fateful choices that will ensure that they will have to live without each other, forever and ever. What is surprising is that they were so blind to the fact that their actions would have irreversible, devastating consequences.

M. William Phelps is a skilled researcher who knows how to delve for facts and nuances, and page by page, he uncovers the details, delineating the story of this young couple’s disastrous obsession from its inception to its miserable conclusion. He approaches this murder from three angles, that of the victim and her fiance, that of the besotted, daughter and her maladjusted suitor, and that of the legal system. This is no mystery story; rather, it is a dissection of the anatomy of a crime committed by two terribly misguided, hysterical teens. It is nothing less than chilling, another example about what can happen when children are improperly parented. Highly recommended.

The knight and the abbess

This is the second Hawkenlye novel I’ve read. While the writing of Alys Clare lacks the edge of Ellis Peters’, Clare’s settings, characters, and time period add interest to her mysteries. In Ashes, several murders occur in the immediate vicinity of Abbess Helewise’s abbey. The sheriff is little more than an idiot, and she turns to her friend Sir Josse to get to the bottom of first one crime, then another and another. Are they related? Who could the murderer be? What could the motive be? The investigation, following some puzzling behavior on the part of 2 young women staying at the abbey, takes Josse and the Abbess into the woods for a very long night. The rumor that the ancient People may be back to celebrate their vile rituals brings about some tantalizing happenings.

Definitely a “cozy”, Ashes brings little suspense to the story line. Generally speaking, life in the middle ages is accurately represented, but there are errors (people back then did not wear undergarments, for instance.) Comportment for the most part is oh so proper, and Helewise is the epitome of wisdom and saintliness. Still, interesting conundrums are brought to the surface along the way, and make for a pleasant, engaging read.